10 killed in Baghdad market blast

Thursday 12 May 2005 06.50 EDT
First published on Thursday 12 May 2005 06.50 EDT

At least 10 people were killed and more than 20 injured in a bomb attack on a market in a Shia district of Baghdad today.

The blast followed the deaths of 71 people in a series of suicide bombings yesterday, and came after figures from diplomatic and Iraqi security sources revealed there had been more suicide bombings in April than at any time since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Of the 135 car bombings last month, more than half were suicide missions. Figures showed the number of car bombings has doubled since March.

Police said they were investigating whether today's attack, which wrecked several market stalls and scattered debris across the area, had also been a suicide bombing.

Two senior members of the Iraqi security forces were killed by insurgents as they drove to work in Baghdad today.

Iyad Imad Mahdi, a brigadier-general in the Iraqi army, was shot on his way to the defence ministry, and Colonel Fadhil Muhammed Mobarak was killed as he travelled to his job as the head of the police control room in the interior ministry.

Since the new Iraqi government, led by the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was announced on April 28, almost 400 people have been killed and up to 1,000 wounded in a wave of insurgent attacks.

The bombers have targeted civilians as well as Iraq's nascent security structures and the US-led forces. A US military spokesman said the general insurgency was averaging 70 attacks a day this month, up from 30 to 40 in February and March.

There were five suicide bombings yesterday - one each in the central Iraqi towns of Hawija and Tikrit, and three in Baghdad.

In Hawija, witnesses saw a man with explosives strapped to his body slip through a security cordon at a police and army recruitment centre and blow himself up in a line of 150 people. Iraqi police said at least 30 people were killed, and 35 injured.

In Tikrit, around 80 miles north of Baghdad, at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded in a market near a police station.

Police said the station had been the intended target, but the bomber swerved into a crowd at the market because he was unable to breach the security barriers.